For years, maintaining a physically fit and healthy body has been the goal of an increasing number of individuals. As a major part of this goal, these individuals have employed various diets, either to lose weight, to maintain one's present weight, or to assure that only well-balanced meals are consumed.
In order to assist these people, many systems and programs have been developed. However, these prior art systems have been unable to provide the convenience and flexibility being sought by consumers. As a result, these prior art systems have failed to satisfy the need for a food intake control system which is both flexible and easy to use.
One of the most common prior art diet control systems employs estimating the calories each item of food being consumed represents and counting the total calories being consumed during one day in order to maintain a pre-set maximum calorie intake level. Typically, these systems always fail due to the difficulty in estimating the calories in food being consumed, as well as the inherent difficulty of counting and planning in advance for meals to be consumed.
Although calorie counting has been approached in many ways, these systems all suffer with the same drawbacks. In addition to the counting problems, another important problem is these systems' inability to effectively deal with the requirement that dieter's maintain well-balanced meals consisting of all food groups, in order to assure that no adverse effects will be realized from the particular diet program being used. Also, prior art diet programs and systems are traditionally rigid and limited to specific food types and meals which can be consumed without jeopardizing the diet program. As a result, these prior art diet programs and systems are short lived and fail to attain the results which the individual was seeking to realize.
Therefore, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a food consumption planning and control system which is highly flexible, does not require calorie counting, and allows an individual to vary the foods being eaten for any meal, while still maintaining the maximum caloric intake for a particular day.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a food consumption planning and control system having the characteristic features described above which is easy to use and does not require an individual to identify and count the calories being consumed in any particular food.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a food consumption planning and control system having the characteristic features described above which assures that the foods being consumed are well-balanced and represent all of the desirable food groups, without being burdensome or limited.
Other and more specific objects will in part be obvious and will in part appear hereinafter.